


look at you / strawberry blond

by fraldarian



Series: i love everybody (because i love you) [1]
Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Coming Out, Fluff, M/M, Post-Time Skip, Trans Sylvain Jose Gautier, Weddings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-05
Updated: 2020-08-05
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:22:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,776
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25720510
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fraldarian/pseuds/fraldarian
Summary: The first time Sylvain lets himself be something he’s not is during his days as an academy student. Unused lipstick and tights, a mirror and hazel eyes framed by charcoal eyeliner.
Relationships: Felix Hugo Fraldarius/Sylvain Jose Gautier
Series: i love everybody (because i love you) [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1884040
Comments: 25
Kudos: 128





	look at you / strawberry blond

**Author's Note:**

> sylvain is written as he/him transfem in this fic. for more posts you can follow me on twitter @fraldarian.  
> the art for this fic was drawn by the lovely @rosentraume on twitter!

As a child, Sylvain had spent hazy summer days and frigid winter nights in the heart of Galatea territory. It had been a way for him to escape the wrath of Miklan, the woes of Sreng, and the continuous thought that one day he’d become the Margrave. His future might have looked bleak, but it had been hard to truly linger on it with the tethering touch of Felix’s clammy fingers, the golden locks of a smiling Ingrid and the bashful stares of a princely Dimitri.

The stables had been his favourite part about Ingrid’s manor, even more so than when he’d spend afternoons in the forest inventing games of chivalry and fantastical escapades. The pegasi had been his favourite, and now, looking back on it, Sylvain isn’t surprised they’d taken a liking to him. The pegasi knew more about young Sylvain than Sylvain had known about himself.

There’s a lot that happens over the course of his life. Sometimes, it feels like he’s lived multiple times. The tidings of war and peace and love shift and blow with the breeze, and if he looks close enough, he might consider himself a grain of sand upon a beach. When he raises his eyes and looks out, he sees that all of them are. Felix, Ingrid and Dimitri, and whatever ghosts of a far from forgotten past that haunt their waking steps.

Sylvain spends most of his life hiding. It began as a child, with the bolting of locks upon a closet door and the dripping of water down a well. Somewhere in the middle there’s numb hands and foreign smiles and the wincing of fresh cuts upon his heart as another stranger pulls out. At the end, there’s himself, with a millennium of Faerghus ideals sitting upon his shoulders.

The first time Sylvain lets himself be something he’s not is during his days as an academy student. Unused lipstick and tights, a mirror and hazel eyes framed by charcoal eyeliner. He’s on his knees that night, staring at a reflection that includes framed lashes and a subtle aching in his chest that no longer feels foreign.

He’d been frightened, at first. And after that he’d repressed it. Even after Miklan had been killed, and the only lasting thing of his to torment Sylvain was his ghost and a lance that seemed permanently stained with blood. Even after the war breaks out and Sylvain is left wondering if he’ll wake up the next morning, or if he’ll taste dirt in his mouth and feel maggots between his eye sockets.

When he proposes to Felix, he’s twenty-eight. He remembers a ring, and soft hands, and the way his arms shook when a childhood spent full of yearning and pining and unspoken confessions had finally said yes. He thinks that maybe, he too, deserves to be happy. They both do.

At their wedding, Sylvain realizes he’s spent twenty-nine years of his life living as someone he’s not.

Felix looks beautiful. He always does, in every memory and picture that Sylvain’s stored away inside his mind. He’s sitting across from Sylvain now, clasps undone and a cape hung loose upon his shoulders. Atop his raven hair sits a circlet, so delicately placed that Sylvain’s heart nearly shatters.

In his fiancé’s hand is a brush made from fine horsehair.

“Where should I start?” Felix asks softly, and his face hovers so close that Sylvain can pick out hues of amber in his eyes and the way his breath stirs fine hairs.

Sylvain raises a freckled palm, touches just underneath his left lid. “With the charcoal.”

He’s done this himself, many times. Never with Felix’s help, and never in the presence of others except himself. But it’s their wedding. He’s got his vows tucked away, knows what he wants to say.

A long time ago they’d made a promise to die together. He doesn’t think a promise such as that is needed anymore. Not when this means the joining of two souls and two hearts and two sets of hands. Living together is their end goal now.

“Okay.” Felix is slow, deliberate, gentle with his movements. It’s so heartbreakingly tender that Sylvain isn’t sure what to do except let his eyes flutter shut, and there’s a shaky intake of air as a finger comes to trace the outline of his eyes.

When Felix pulls away, Sylvain opens them, and fixes his gaze upon his beloved. “Does it look alright?” He’s never asked someone this before; the sincerity and vulnerability laced in with his words makes him feel almost sick to his core.

“It looks bewitching on you.” It’s said with such conviction that Sylvain has to blink hot spears from his eyes. They threaten to pool over anyways, like a dam that’s breaking. “The lipstick now, right?”

There’s an imperceptible nod from Sylvain. “Yeah,” he whispers.

The ruby beeswax is applied with a steady hand. Felix had always been steady, steady in handling swords and steady on his feet. The only time Sylvain had ever seen the man crumple was when faced with a tombstone that said _Glenn_ and rotting flowers whose petals were no longer vibrant.

When Felix’s brother had died, he’d told Sylvain that there was nothing good left in the world. There was nothing worth being chivalrous for, not when it meant dying for a monarchy that did little in return.

But it’s different now. Felix smiles regularly, and he hums when he cleans. They’re songs he’s picked up from Annette, and stories passed on from Ashe. It’s a life neither thought they’d live to see, but now that they’ve achieved it, they hold onto it with a steadfast and undying grip.

“One more thing.” Felix’s voice brings Sylvain’s attention back from his thoughts. In Felix’s hand is a small glass of water, highlighted through means of strawberries. “For your cheeks.” He dabs a thumb, tracing Sylvain’s cheekbones lightly, and then pulls away.

There’s a silence that stretches between them. When Sylvain speaks, he’s quiet, and he hates the quiver that latches pathetically on with his words. “Do I look alright?”

Felix had only done his makeup because Sylvain, after years, had asked. It had been a moment of precious intimacy and vulnerability, Sylvain’s hands in Fe’s and a desperate stare that held more words than he could possibly say out loud.

When his fiancé answers, it leaves Sylvain breathless. “You look beautiful.”

That’s when the river floods, and Sylvain has to blink hot tears away to refrain from messing the artwork Felix has created. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to cry.” His face cracks, and he looks away shamefully to the ground. His hands, he finds, are shaking.

Felix takes them in his open palms. “Don’t apologize.” Though his tone carries stern, his words are soft, as if he’s scolding a child who has stolen from the kitchens. It’s a lesson to be taught, and the lesson is that it’s alright to cry. Tears in the Gautier family had always meant weakness – now, with Felix, it meant strength.

“Can I ask you something?” Sylvain’s still staring at their entwined fingers.

“Of course.”

“Is it wrong to feel like you’re someone else?”

“I think not, Sylvain.”

When he meets Felix’s eyes, his fiancé’s stare is one of unadulterated honesty. Somehow, that makes things seem a little alright. A little less like it’s simply himself against the world, and instead, them against the world.

“I don’t know what I feel, Fe.”

“It’s alright to not know.”

Sylvain swallows. There’s a fountain of words upon his tongue, a bottomless sea to explore and wax poetry that he’d like to form. But instead, all that rises from his throat is a soft, nearly imperceptible sound. It’s a noise he’d associate with a wounded mutt. In Faerghus, there’d always been a clean-cut line between what was considered appealing to the eyes of men and to the eyes of women: Sylvain’s father had made sure that his children grew up knowing as much. Crests as a trophy prize and a life of rutting to produce even more – that was what Sylvain had come to learn. It’s what had been instilled in him as a way to survive. Felix had been the one to change that thought process. It was one that terrified him to accept, and yet, despite the trembling of his heartstrings like a musician playing his lyre, he’s ready to grow.

“There’s a lot we don’t know about life.” Felix is speaking again, and this time he’s staring off into the mirror behind Sylvain. “And I think hiding how we feel isn’t a good way to live it.”

Sylvain purses his lips, tasting the hint of beeswax upon his tongue. “What do you think of me, Felix?”

When Felix opens his mouth, he brings with him all things that are bright and warm and comforting. “I think that you are my best friend. That you are my fiancé.” There’s a crooked smile, one that’s so characteristically Felix that Sylvain doesn’t know what he’d do without it. “And I think that you are one of the bravest people I know.”

“I don’t feel brave. I’ve ran from who I am my entire life.”

“You _are_ brave, Syl. More than I ever will be or more than I ever could.” When Felix’s palm squeezes his, it’s solid and grounding. “No matter who you identify as, I’ll always love you.”

He isn’t sure what he wants to do. As a child, he’d hidden the niceties of others behind a false smile while his core was shaken to its very fundamentals. But he doesn’t want to do that, not with Felix in his hands and a silver ring that shines around his finger. “Don’t put yourself down like that.” He cups Fe’s chin, dances a thumb over translucent scars. “You’re the kindest man I know. The most honourable, too.”

Felix eyes skirt over Sylvain’s curled lashes, across rosy cheeks and vibrant lips. “Then I suppose it’s a good thing you’re marrying me.”

Sylvain’s smile is faint, but his eyes radiate rays of warmth. “Absolutely. Let’s go, my love.”

When Sylvain watches Felix walk down the aisle, it feels like a fairy tale. He almost chastises himself for it; there are no fairy tales in Faerghus, and before long the duties of the Margrave and Duke will come full circle. In the end, though, he chooses against it. Chooses against it when Felix’s eyes meet his, chooses against it when they say their vows.

In Sylvain’s mind, it is a fairy tale. Especially when he leans down to capture his husband’s lips in the afternoon Faerghan sun.


End file.
